Why is there a credit inquiry from a company I never applied with?
Unknown creditors, banks, or clothing companies are running credit checks and soft inquiries on people who never applied for a loan or shopped with them. This leaves individuals wondering whether to dispute the marks, investigate potential clerical errors, or contact someone else about unauthorized activity on their credit report.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Freezing credit at all three major bureaus2 people mentionedDid this help you?
- 2Opting out of pre-screened credit offers using optoutprescreen.comDid this help you?
- 3setting fraud alertsDid this help you?
- 4disputing unknown itemsDid this help you?
- 5pulling all three full reports to check for odd addresses, names, or accountsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“But my concern came from an unknown employer being added to my report last week. I am a stay at home mom and haven’t worked for 6 years. I disputed it and it came off. But should I be concerned?”source ↗
“There are a couple soft credit hits from last week as well from creditninja and turbo funding that I never applied for.”source ↗
“I haven’t applied for a loan or credit, nor worked, in 6 years so should I be contacting someone else about this? Or could this be a clerical error.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 11How do I dispute a bunch of incorrect charges at once?
- 2How did my credit card get hacked while traveling?
- 2Why are valid credit cards getting declined for no reason?
- 3Why did my credit score drop after getting a new card?
- 2How much credit history do lenders actually require for approval?
- 2Family opened credit cards in my name when I was a minor